


Ba Humbug

by mithborien



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-20
Updated: 2007-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-19 14:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithborien/pseuds/mithborien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Voldemort was getting closer. Physically, figuratively and mentally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ba Humbug

The Great Hall is decked out with Christmas decorations.

Holly and mistletoe are choking stair rails and columns, their dead and rotting roots forcing their way though the cracks in the walls, breaking and flaking the stone apart. Pixies and fairies sit immobilised in the corners around the room but the only thing their fading light illuminates is the twisted and suffering expressions on their faces.

It’s snowing inside, cold and sticky and grey.

Cedric is sitting alone at the Hufflepuff table, the other seats deserted. His robes are long and formal and his hair is freshly combed and untouched by the snow

“Hi,” he says cheerfully, when Harry walks into the room.

“Hi,” Harry replies, looking up at the gently waving Hufflepuff banners, if only to avoid looking at Cedric. He looks behind at the firmly locked doors and scans the empty seats. He looks downwards and sees that his clothes, casual and worn out, are covered in dust and dirt and blood. They’re the same clothes he’s worn for the past two days.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, finally meeting Cedric’s face.

Cedric laughs, untroubled and echoing. “And neither should you, Potter. Tell me, where are you supposed to be?”

 _Nowhere, I’m nowhere…_

Harry keeps staring and sees Cedric smile back at him. That carefree, confident smile that looks so effortless on the older boy, a smile that looked so easy and sincere, as if Cedric had almost forgotten it was still there. He had smiled just before they grabbed the Cup.

 _Kill the spare…_

Harry doesn’t remember if he actually saw Cedric die. He remembers him falling, he remembers green light and an offhand curse but not the specifics.

“Did you do the decorations?” Harry asks, walking slowly towards his old Gryffindor table. He hasn’t sat here and enjoyed a meal and friends for more than a year now.

“Yeah. Do you like them?” Cedric grins again as he tips his head back to stare at the Hall’s ceiling, the supporting columns and beams seeming to swirl as a massive snow storm plays above their heads. There’s snow in Harry’s eyes, gluing his eyelashes together and it feels real. There are dead leaves falling from Cedric’s shoulders.

Harry sits down at the Gryffindor table as Cedric gets to his feet. The air seems cold, he can feel himself shiver but the smooth wooden benches are warm.

“So tell me,” Harry begins, “are you a hallucination or a dream. I forget the difference these days.”

The grin is still frozen on Cedric’s face. “How do you know I’m not a ghost?” he counters.

Harry snorts. “For a start, you’re not transparent.”

“Maybe I’m a ghost in a dream. In dreams, anything is possible.”

 _It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live…_

“That would be a new one,” Harry says. He scratches his nails against the polished finish of the Gryffindor table and watches the wood split and lift away. It’s rotten underneath. “You’re forgetting condition number two,” he says quietly.

“Which is?” Cedric’s voice sounds closer but Harry doesn’t look up. A dead leaf floats down to settle beside his hands.

“Ghosts choose to stay behind,” Harry says, picking up the leaf. “They’re… they’re scared of death and so they choose to stay. Or at least that’s what one told me once.”

“Are you afraid of death?”

“Sometimes.” The leaf is dry and charred around the edges; it crumples in his hand and stains his skin the colour of dried blood. “You weren’t?”

“Maybe I didn’t have enough time to be afraid,” Cedric says and Harry looks up to see the older boy walking towards him. “Maybe if I had the time to see it coming, the wand raised, the incantation mouthed, the green light flared, maybe if I had time to see all that, hear all that, feel all that then I would be utterly terrified.” He pauses, leans against the edge of the Gryffindor table. “Then I would see death before my eyes. I would whimper and cower, knowing I was about to die so very painfully and without a chance to save my poor, miserable life.”

“No,” Harry says firmly. “Cedric wouldn’t be afraid. Besides, they say an Avada Kedavra is relatively painless, over so quick.”

Cedric tilts his head back, glances slyly over his shoulder. “That’s what _they_ say it is. I bet none of _they_ ever experienced one.”

“No, I suppose not,” Harry concedes.

“Do you think it hurts?” Cedric asks, his voice suddenly boy-young and scared.

“You tell me.” Harry shrugs, sending the piles of snow that had culminated on his shoulders scattering to the ground. “You were killed by it.”

“But I wasn’t killed by it. I’m right here.” Cedric’s closer now, standing just behind Harry’s shoulder.

“You’re not Cedric’s ghost.” Harry doesn’t turn his head as Cedric slips onto the bench beside him, doesn’t move as he feels Cedric’s robes brush against his arm, doesn’t flinch as he feels the warmth of a body long dead.

“But this is the Wizarding World, Harry,” Cedric whispers, furtively, eagerly. “Anything is possible. Wizards and witches can be anything. We can do _anything_.”

 _Bottle fame, brew glory, stopper death…_

“You can’t bring the dead back to life,” Harry says and sees Cedric’s grin widen.

“Maybe we just haven’t found the right wizard to do it.”

 _Brew glory…_

Dead leaves continue to fall from Cedric’s shoulders and there is now dirt smudged across his cheeks, blood crusted under his nails, green light in his eyes.

“Did my parents miss me?” Cedric asks and Harry hears his ghostly voice from the graveyard all over again.

 _Remember Cedric…_

“We all miss you.”

 _Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice…_

“That’s good.” Cedric crosses his arms and leans forward. “So how’s the war going?”

 _Remember what happened to a boy…_

Harry closes his eyes.

 _…strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort._

If he concentrates hard enough he can still hear the echoes of old conversations, laughter bouncing across tables, snatches of the Sorting Hat’s song warning everyone.

 _Or we’ll crumble from within…_

He can hear a Phoenix singing.

“Everything changed after you died,” Harry says quietly, opening his eyes.

Cedric blinks and looks at him.

“You were the first blood,” Harry continues. “The first casualty of the war.”

Cedric shrugs. “It had to start with one,” he says reasonably.

“I wonder sometimes,” Harry says, drumming his fingers against the table, digging splinters in under his nails. “How things would have turned out if I had just grabbed the Cup myself.”

“First blood is first blood. Someone would have died eventually.”

“But you would still be alive,” Harry points out.

“Wondering who would be haunting your thoughts instead?” Cedric says and then laughs. “Wondering whose death you would be feeling guilty about instead?”

Harry closes his eyes again but in his mind he can still see the roots of the wildly growing holly and mistletoe breaking apart the walls. He can see the faces of the trapped pixies and fairies that are frozen in horror and fear. The figure of boy who might have been a friend but was now just a name amongst the list of the long dead.

Cedric sighs and looks around. “I used to love it here,” he says in a bored voice. “I can’t remember why now.”

A piece of dislodged stone falls from the ceiling and smashes against the ground, flinging mould stained shards around the room.

~

It’s Hermione’s insistent shake of the shoulder that wakes him. Harry’s eyes snap open and his hand is all ready clenched around his wand but Hermione steps backward before either of them has to acknowledge it.

“Dinner’s ready,” she says apologetically.

“I’m not hungry,” Harry mumbles, slipping his wand back.

“You’re never hungry these days,” she chides. “You still need to eat.”

Harry sighs. “Fine.” When Hermione still doesn’t leave he raises an eyebrow at her. “Making sure I actually get up, are you?”

Hermione sighs as well, except hers is far more exasperated. “Enjoying the book?” she asks, gesturing down the book Harry had been cradling in his arms as he slept, the spine cracked open across his chest.

He glances at the cover, old and stained like everything else in this place. “I guess,” he says. He can’t actually remember starting the book, or even what part he had just read.

“It was my dad’s favourite book,” Hermione says, her words light and cheerful and so very forced to Harry’s ears. “He used to read it to me every year when I was younger. Every Christmas.”

“Oh,” Harry says. “Did you want to read it again? I don’t mind.”

She bites her lip. “No, it’s fine. You already asked if anyone wanted to read it.”

“I did?”

Yes,” Hermione says sharply and shakes her head. “Dinner’s ready,” she repeats and walks away.

The house they’re staying at for the moment has a whole shelf of old books, dust coated and well read. Harry picked one at random so no one would scold him for sitting by himself and staring blankly at the walls. He has to check the cover, ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens, every time he sits down to read it. At least he thinks he reads it, he doesn’t remember, for all he knows he could just be turning page after page, just letting the text blur before his eyes in a failed attempt to stop himself thinking. He can’t remember if he ever had any books when he was younger.

The house they’re stuck in has grey bricks and white walls, a temporary hideout that has changed to semi-permanent and now Harry has no idea when they will leave.

He doesn’t know the address.

 _Nowhere, it’s nowhere…_

It’s situated beside a park that’s been closed for replanting and repairs. It’s a useful spot to Apparate to in the middle of the night, the scaffolding bars mask any stray movement and the ‘Caution – Work in Progress’ signs keep people out. Harry doesn’t know what’s in the buildings surrounding the house but they look dead and deserted whenever he sits at a window and stares.

Inside the house, beside the shelf of old books, there’s not much else that's interesting. Someone transfigured an old mop into a Christmas tree to distract from the depression of blank walls but it smells like cleaning products and makes you light headed if you stray too long near it. Glass baubles, transfigured from broken glass, decorate the branches, spinning multicoloured lights across the room.

There’s a bunch of people here for a Christmas Eve dinner that Harry doesn’t know by name, with faces he barley recognises. There’s a couple of Aurors that Tonks and Kingsley converted to their cause. Harry does remember Tonks saying that it wasn’t hard to gain their support. Disillusionment is rife throughout the Ministry as every day brings another death, another attack, another disappearance, another of what the Aurors are instructed to label as incidents and file away as paperwork. There’s nothing more disheartening, Tonks had said, to think you are preserving the peace and then to realise you aren’t doing shit.

There’s a woman with scars across her face who says nothing but who others claimed was once a werewolf hunter. Remus apparently vouched for her trustworthiness and Harry supposes that if there was anyone to vouch for a werewolf hunter that it would be a werewolf themself.

Ron and Hermione are here as well. They always are, always by his side with a spare wand or a spare spell. He wonders how long they’ll be there, how long they can survive all the attacks that are aimed at him.

Harry hasn’t seen anyone else in weeks

 _Nowhere, they’re nowhere…_

He sits down in the chair Hermione points out to him and looks over a Christmas dinner that he can’t smell and probably won’t be able to taste.

It’s Christmas Eve and there are no presents under the tree.

~

Sirius is playing chess by himself on the front step of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. He keeps twisting the board around on his knees to move a piece on the other side. There’s a frown on his face but it turns into a slight grin as he counters a move from the previous turn. He doesn’t look up and Harry remains sitting on the curb on the other side of the street, watching the way the edges of the house blur into the street from its magical protections.

“You going to come over?” Sirius calls across the street, still looking down at the chess board.

“I don’t like that house,” Harry says, wrapping his arms around his knees and tapping the toes of his shoes in the puddle that had gathered around his feet from the water running through the gutter.

Sirius smiles. “No one did.”

“It’s destroyed now,” Harry says.

“I know.”

“Bellatrix did it.” Harry watches as a soggy leaf flows into one of his boots and catches itself in his trailing laces.

Sirius smiles some more. “She destroyed a lot of things. Come join the game?”

“I’m not that good at chess,” Harry admits, watching the leaf detach itself from his boot laces and continue on down the gutter. His boots are Dragonhide, tough and expensive and covered in unidentifiable stains.

“’Tis a noble game.”

“Noble like the Ancient House of Black?” Harry asks, glancing up at Sirius.

 _Toujours pur…_

Sirius frowns, spins the chess board without looking at it. “We both know they weren’t as noble or as pure in the end as they pretended to be.”

Harry drops his eyes, looking at the way the gutter water turned grey and red and green as it flowed across his spell stained boots and down a drain.

“You know,” Harry says. “These visits don’t hurt as much as I thought they would.”

“Maybe you just don’t care enough?” Sirius says, raising an eyebrow and rolling one of the chess pieces between his fingers.

 _It was your heart that saved you…_

“I care too much,” Harry says quietly, too quietly he would have thought to be heard from across the street but Sirius still answered.

“You don’t think about me much anymore,” Sirius accuses.

“It hurts too much,” Harry says, looking up just in time to see Sirius look down and move a chess piece.

 _You heard them, just behind the Veil…_

Harry stands up and crosses the street. There are no passer-bys, no cars, no one out walking their dogs. There are no sounds of distant traffic, or of birds singing. There isn’t a group of Aurors coming to rescue him. There are no Dementors coming to suck out his soul.

Harry can’t even hear himself breathe.

“I never did understand,” Harry says, still standing in the middle of the street, “why the great and wondrous House of Black was in the middle of a Muggle neighbourhood?”

“We were here first,” Sirius said petulantly, spins the chess board and it sounds like nails scratching desperately against stone walls.

Harry finally moves beside him and sits down. The chess board on Sirius’ knees is exquisitely crafted, details carved in a marble of shifting shades of silver, grey and cream with thin lines of silver and gold outlining the squares.

But all the pieces look the same, vague shapes carved out of a dull grey stone advancing across the board. The only way to tell the sides apart is by the Kings. One looks like Voldemort, with dark shadowed robes and rubies in his eyes. The other King looks like Harry himself, emeralds in his face and a tiny crack in the stone of his head.

It wasn’t a Wizarding board, the figures immobile, frozen and waiting.

“Chess is about taking chances,” Sirius says, his face scrunched in concentration.

“I can’t take chances,” Harry says, staring at the board.

“You take chances all the time,” Sirius points out. “Infamous for it at school, weren’t you?”

 _That’s chess! You’ve got to make sacrifices…_

Harry takes a deep breath. “I can’t anymore. Too many people died.”

 _Died rather than betray your friends…_

Sirius glances at him but says nothing, turning back to the chess board. Neither king in the game had moved so far.

 _Weasley is our King!_

The board spins again.

It’s cold here. The street tunnels wind like a funnel and Harry’s t-shirt leaves his arms bare. There’s a bandage around his wrist, an injury from a battle he can’t remember, that is now damp with blood and the wind feels like ice against it. Sirius’ hair, long and perfectly combed, remains still in the breeze but when Harry turns around, he sees the curtains on the first floor windows of Grimmauld Place billowing out madly, reaching towards them. The glass panes are broken and the material slams itself against the filthy exterior of the house.

“You know,” Harry begins casually, forcing himself to turn away from the frantic curtains. “The problem with chess is that too much time is spent in thought and planning instead of in action.”

Sirius grins, stretching the skin of his face across bones too sharp. “That’s m’boy,” he says and squeezes Harry on the shoulder.

 _You are truly your father’s son…_

Harry reaches down to the board and moves his king across the squares until he’s in front of the piece that looks like Voldemort.

“Bold move,” Sirius says admiringly.

“You’ve done worse.”

Sirius laughs and lets the chess board slip from his hands. The board shatters on the ground, splatters mud and dirty water as the chess pieces scatter. A couple roll down a drain.

“Pity it was an illegal move though,” Sirius muses, brushing his hands across his knees.

Harry smiles. “I wasn’t aware we were playing by any rules.”

“There are always rules, Harry,” Sirius says. “There are always consequences. So what happened to Headquarters if you don’t have Grimmauld Place?”

Harry doesn’t answer. He looks down, sees the forgotten chess pieces spread across the street, stained dark by the grimy water. The emeralds have been knocked from Harry’s eyes.

Sirius notices where Harry is staring and when he stands he kicks the chess piece into the gutter.

“Bold move,” Sirius says again and walks away, his long coat swirling in the breeze.

~

Harry always falls asleep clutching the book. He isn’t particularly fond of it or worried that someone might take it from him, but if he doesn’t sleep with something clenched in his hands, he wakes up with bloody fists, nails dug into his skin.

The pages of the book may have become stained with sweat and the corners of the hardback always dig into his ribs but at least he doesn’t wake up with blood smeared over his sheets anymore.

It’s Christmas Day and the house is filled with the smell of coffee. He finds Ron standing in the kitchen, cradling a steaming mug against his chest. He offers Harry the half full mug but Harry shakes his head. Coffee doesn’t wake him up anymore.

There are deep shadows under Ron’s eyes, a consequence of being up all night. They always leave someone awake, someone on guard just in case. Harry can’t remember the last time he looked in a mirror and he doesn’t want to know how much worse he looks.

He can hear faint noises as the rest of the house wakes up. No one really sleeps all that well anymore.

Ron gives him an absent-minded squeeze on the shoulder as he passes, opening the curtains as he stumbles around the small number of rooms in the house. The sun has barely risen, faint light filling the room.

The curtains, opened or closed, make no difference to the safety of the house. Any Muggle peering in the windows would see nothing and any witch or wizard powerful enough to see through the glamours around the house would be powerful enough that the other wards on the house wouldn’t stand a chance. Hermione insists the curtains stay opened to show that they haven’t completely hidden away, that there’s still a world out there. A world they’re trying to save.

 _Nowhere, we’re nowhere…_

Harry follows Ron into the living room and sees him sitting on a low window sill, staring outside, the sunlight making his hair flare orange.

There are parchment embers in the fireplace that are still glowing, edges curling and blackening.

“Did a report come through?” Harry asks, settling down on the couch again. The cushions are still in the same position he left them the night before.

“Yeah,” Ron says, glancing at the fireplace. “No changes.”

Harry sighs and closes his eyes.

“This isn’t how I thought it was going to be, you know,” Ron says vaguely when Harry doesn’t say anything else, as if he’s talking to himself. “This isn’t how I thought it would end.”

Harry opens his eyes but Ron is still staring at the fireplace, at the burnt remains of the only communication they’re allowed.

“This house is going to drive me crazy,” Ron mutters and wanders back into the kitchen. A moment later Harry hears the rattle of pots and pans as Ron starts breakfast.

“I’m going to go crazy no matter what house I’m in,” Harry whispers to himself and opens his book. He never uses a bookmark, it’s not like he’ll know if he reads something he’s read before.

~

The field is open and endless, a deep, rippling green of shifting colours as pure white clouds float overhead. In the far off distance, there are lines of hedges, tall and leafy with no gaps. Beyond them are blurred mountains, purple and blue and shadowed.

Voldemort is standing in front of him.

 _He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named…_

Harry stands behind him.

 _The-Boy-Who-Lived…_

“What?” Harry asks as Voldemort turns towards him, his black robes flapping and winding around him. “Gonna try to convince me you’re a ghost as well?”

Voldemort smiles, teeth pearly white and eyes glowing red. “Maybe I am dead. Maybe you already killed me and I am lying dead in a gutter somewhere.”

“A gutter?” Harry says and laughs, harsh and choking. “That’s rather anti-climatic. I thought we would have a huge spell duel in the halls of Hogwarts, trading blast after blast until one of us simply gives up in sheer futility.”

“Have you given up?” Voldemort’s voice is calm and soothing.

 _As long as someone still loyal to me remains…_

If Harry were to close his eyes, he can imagine how Voldemort’s voice would sound just like Sirius’, like Molly’s, like a mother’s voice, like a father’s. A voice he could confide in, a voice that could comfort him.

“But we already did Hogwarts, didn’t we?” he manages to say, forcing himself to look directly at Voldemort’s eyes. “And the Ministry. St. Mungos, as well. Not to mention Grimmauld Place, Diagon Alley, that field I forgot the name of which is sacred for some reason. Then there are the Muggle locations: Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, the Stonehenge. Pretty soon we’ll destroy the whole world.”

“That is not my aim.” Voldemort hasn’t moved, neither has Harry.

“Don’t you want this all to end, Harry?” Voldemort continues. “Don’t you want peace? No more pain, no more dreams?”

 _Avada Kedavra…_

Harry closes his eyes. “You started this. You dragged me into this. It’s your mistake. The Prophecy was a load of rubbish and ever so slowly you are making it truth. You’re playing a game which you did not create.” Harry blinks as he feels his scar start to throb. “And you are losing.”

 _He chose the boy he thought most likely to be a danger to him…_

Voldemort laughs and Harry feels the sleeve of his arm start to get wet. He looks down and sees the school shirt he’s suddenly wearing bloom red with blood, flowing from a wound a loyal servant once used to resurrect a master.

“We make our own destiny, Harry. We control our own fate.” Voldemort’s voice seems far away for a moment, a whisper in a huge room.

 _Bone of the father…_

“Regardless of blood?” Harry asks, his voice echoing as if in a water flooded cavern.

 _Hissy, hissy, little snakey…_

“Regardless of anything,” Voldemort answers, glaring. “How many more people are going to die for you?”

 _Death is but the next great adventure…_

Harry doesn’t answer. He can feel his fingers dripping with blood, ever flowing. He can feel a gentle breeze through his hair, smell freshly grown grass, warm sunlight on his skin. It’s just like a few minutes break between classes at Hogwarts used to feel. Surrounded by friends and where your only worry-

 _Stolen stone, voices in the pipes, escaped prisoner, name in a goblet, broken prophecy, oncoming war…_

-was the test in your next class.

The Gryffindor tie around his neck is too tight. He pulls it off and lets the wind steal it from his hands. He can still feel Voldemort staring at him. Here they have all the time in the world but Harry is watching his tie, a flash of red and gold, swimming through the air, caught and twisted by the winds.

“I said-” Voldemort asks again but Harry cuts him off.

“I heard you.” He’s still watching his tie, now blown down onto the ground, wrapped between long thick tufts of grass. Harry sees the tie start to smoke.

“This can only end one way, Potter,” Voldemort says.

 _And either must die at the hand of the other…_

The field is burning now, hedges up in flames, grass crumbling to char around their feet. Harry’s tie is nothing more than blackened material. The clouds above them are glowing green, the sky darkening.

“One lives and one dies?” Harry says, turning back to a long ago ordained enemy. “I guess we have a schedule to keep now.”

 _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…_

“I thought you didn’t believe in the prophecy?” Voldemort asks, staring.

 _The Dark Lord will rise again…_

Harry smiles. “I just don’t believe in you.”

There is the sound of magic in the distance, shouted words and the crack of spells detonating. There are screams and howls. There is the sound of the earth itself being torn to pieces, buildings crashing down, mountains cracking, families broken apart.

Someone is calling for help. Someone is falling through a Veil. Someone is crying. Someone is being Crucioed. Someone is falling in a flare of green light. Someone can’t use their legs anymore. Someone isn’t coming home.

Voldemort continues to stare at him. If Harry stares hard enough back he can see flickers of Tom Riddle’s youthful face in Voldemort’s pale misshapen features. He wonders what Voldemort sees in his.

“Is this how you envisioned it, Potter? Your glorious resistance?”

 _I am not worried, Harry. I am with you…_

“I envision nothing these days,” Harry says, as the smoke from the burning ground becomes too thick to see.

 _We’re with you whatever happens…_

~

Voldemort was getting closer.

Physically, figuratively and mentally.

Every night, he was slowly sifting through Harry’s mind, memory after memory. In every twisted dream, Harry sacrificed another half remembered fragment of memory to distract Voldemort from the knowledge he was after.

Every day brought more reports of attacks and deaths that Harry doesn’t read. He doesn’t read about how the war is being fought without him. What he doesn’t know, Voldemort can’t take from him.

Names of allies, the Order’s plans, what he knows of the Horc-

 _Don’t think it, don’t say it..._

-hoping to hell Voldemort doesn’t find a hint of their next mission until it’s too late.

Harry envisions a wall, a thick wall, infinitely wide, infinitely tall and curving in on itself. He thinks of two walls, three walls, ten, one hundred walls side by side, made of stone and wood, brick and mortar. A wall made of iron and steel and every metal imaginable, of dragon hide and basilisk scale. One made of magic, warded by spells and blessed by charms. He imagines the walls of Hogwarts, strong and clean and giving the impression that they stood tall when magic was still young. He thinks of hidden passageways, secret rooms and dead ends on a map that cannot be seen. A Room of Requirement within a Chamber of Secrets, an unplottable nook veiled by a Fidelus charm.

He envisions a room under the stairs.

Harry doesn’t know Occlumency, at least not properly. He doesn’t know enough to keep Voldemort out of his mind but he knows enough not to let anyone else in.

Voldemort may only be able to reach his mind because of what happened when Harry was a child, when a baby somehow defeated the darkest wizard that ever lived. But Harry knows that if he lets someone else in to help, let’s someone else put up protections for him, builds his walls for him, then that just creates another connection that Voldemort can weaken, a link to another mind he can reach and Harry can’t risk that.

Last time, a traitor willingly supplied information. This time, Harry is terrified that someone might unwillingly supply information and his greatest suspect is himself.

Voldemort had fourteen years experience without a proper body, fourteen years to exist through the power of his mind, the force of his will and sense of self.

Harry barely learnt Occlumency three years ago.

And now the Dark Lord approaches. He’s getting closer, Harry can feel it. Voldemort is getting closer, the war battles on and Harry is running out of memories.

~

He closes his eyes, his pillow damp from sweat despite the way his breath clouds from the cold. He’s asleep within moments or rather if he’s not quite asleep then he’s not really awake.

 _Nowhere, I’m nowhere…_

A golden griffon revolves.

“Good morning, Harry,” Albus Dumbledore says with a wide, comforting smile. “Merry Christmas. Would you like a humbug? I am afraid I’m out of sherbet lemons.”

 _Nowhere, I’m-_

His father grins and holds out a brand new racing broom.

“Let’s go flying, son.”

 _Nowhere…_

His mother opens her arms and smiles.

 _No._


End file.
